Will the lower costs in oil have an effect on cruise prices ?

There has been much talk about the reduction in oil prices and it is certainly quite refreshing to see that the price of fuel at the pump has gone down rather than up when I go to fill up.

This of course will also have a large impact on the costs to cruise lines and their massive fuel bills to sail their massive ships.

I certainly remember a few years back when there was a jump in oil prices many of the major cruise line’s were charging fuel supplements, most of them added to the fares of new bookings but some were adding to the fares of passengers with existing bookings.

It goes without saying that this doesn’t seem to work quite as easily the other way round, don’t expect your cruise line to approach you and give you extra money off your existing booking due to lower oil prices.

The way that cruise companies buy their oil isn’t as easy as us just filling up at the pump, this is a multi billion dollar operation and cruise lines need some stability on prices so normally come to agreements with oil companies on “fuel price hedges” which give them a safe guard against price rises but can also mean that they don’t see the full benefit of the price reductions.  It may well take time for new agreements to be made so that cruise companies can feel a larger benefit.

That is not to say that cruise companies are not seeing the benefit of reduced oil prices already.  It has been reported that Carnival Corporation for example could see their fuel bill decrease from $2bn in 2014 to under $1.5bn in 2015.

Coupled with the fact that certain cruise line’s are now operating more fuel efficient ships hopefully this should mean good deals for cruisers.